Dallara road car launched

Tony Middlehurst - PistonHeads

Italian motorsport chassis maker moves into the High Street with its Stradale

Here’s something different: a very sweet road/trackday car from Dallara, a company previously only known for its racing chassis expertise.

The Stradale project was put together to celebrate the 81st birthday of Dallara’s founder, Gian Paolo Dallara. It’s obviously track-focused, but can quickly be transformed into a civilised coupé with an optional windscreen, roof and doors.

This carbon-bodied and tubbed roadster weighs just 855kg and has a mid-mounted 400bhp 2.3-litre Ford Ecoboost engine. We don’t have any performance stats, but with that power to weight ratio they will be spectacular.

To start with, the transmission is a six-speed manual but a single-clutch automated gearbox is on the cards. Electronic stability control is included, but not feel-depriving power assistance for the steering.

Dallara is a very credible name. Not only is it highly regarded in motorsport circles, they’ve acted in a consultancy capacity for companies like Bugatti (on the Veyron) and KTM (X-Bow). That credibility could account for the sellout of the first year’s production of Stradales, even at a starting pre-tax price of €155,000.

Entry-level cars come with a skinny aero screen. A removable windscreen and carbon fibre locating frame costs €16,600, with a targa frame roof at €7,700. See-through top-hingeing ‘doors’ come in at €7,300. There’s also an optional rear wing to help the coupé version of the Stradale achieve up to 820kg of downforce, separate-reservoir adjustable dampers and an oil pressure accumulator to make sure the four-cylinder engine doesn’t run dry under 2g cornering loads.

A fully optioned Stradale will bust the £200k mark once you’ve added on Italy’s 22 per cent VAT. Right-hand drive has been worked into the basic design but there’s no plan to build any yet. The factory plans to make and directly sell around 600 cars between now and 2022.